It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon.
The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
But they looked really cool.
Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand.
What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
maybe... maybe we should stop electing these ancient white bastards whose brains fossilized back in the days of rotary phones and vacuum tubes. I don't know.
I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not.
At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.
So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)
† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
Both of these two contests were really weird. Trump is an extremely unusual Republican. Hillary was someone Republican mouthpieces had been priming the electorate to vote against for the prior 20+ years. Kamala moved to the top of the ticket late in the race, in an odd move, replacing a candidate whose approval ratings had been in (historically speaking) “you will definitely lose” territory for months already.
Both races were pretty close despite this.
Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?
I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.
You're correct. That woman (Clinton) had no chance in winning, because Republicans had spent years hammering her in anticipation of her inevitable run, and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy. Had Harris had more time, she could've taken it.
Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.
Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree.
(I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)
Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.
The only 2 that have run are not a good example.
A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.
Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.
The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies).
The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit.
Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea.
There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc.
But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship.
It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage.
Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles.
Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task.
So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
> The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so.
And then it has to go back to base to reload. Reloading at sea is marginally possible. The U.S. Navy has demonstrated it recently, in harbor. But it's not done routinely with live ammo yet. This is a known weak point.
It's not clear when you would ever reload a conventional ships gun at sea either though, particularly on a modern transparent battle space.
It would still involve putting two or more ships in close proximity with heavy lift equipment for an extended time.
If this is close to the front it's a target, if it's not then you could reload VLS cells, and to do it your sacrificing the ability to put munitions on targets quickly which might just cost you the entire ship.
It's not even clear it saves you any reload time, since the only potential benefit is that shells are somewhat smaller then missiles, and even then once you account for magazine design and survivability I'd say the trade off is questionable at best.
You can helicopter shells and propellant onto the deck, then take them below for storage — as loading the guns from their magazines already happens.
VLS requires that you reload missile by missile at the place they’re fired from the top, which requires you have crane access to each VLS cell. You could replace the many non-reloadable tubes with fewer, reloadable tubes connected via loaders to magazines… but we’re starting down the path to re-inventing guns.
The notion of a "crew optional" ship is a bit silly. It might have some utility for coastal defense: when it breaks down close to shore you can send a tugboat to tow it back. But I can't see how uncrewed surface vessels would be of much use to an expeditionary blue-water navy. Anything constantly exposed to salt water and vibration will break down. We're decades away from having robots that can do maintenance and repair.
Routine maintenance like cleaning, inspection, and consumables replacement is very easily automated. Breakdowns can easily be prevented with a combination of redundancy and preventative maintenance. Without a crew you can eliminate many systems that are necessary for sustaining a crew's long term presence which leaves a lot fewer failure points and a lot of room for redundant systems. With modular design you don't need an advanced robot that can fix an arbitrary problem, you just rip out whatever module contains the problem and replace it. It's unlikely on any given deployment that you'd run into a particular problem that can't be handled by an automated system and must be addressed prior to the next return to base, but if you did then telepresence robots, or a team flown over from a nearby ship in the battlegroup would likely be sufficient. If your ship is having a problem that is likely to cause the loss of the ship and a team of experts alone is not enough to fix it, do you really want to have more bodies on that ship?
US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships.
Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them...
The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca.
Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.
> China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island
I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless.
To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China.
> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate
Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets.
edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China
> The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.
truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength?
Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles.
Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!
It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.
There's also potentially a substantial opportunity cost re: parity with China in the near to mid term even if we don't actually end up cancelling the next gen destroyer in favor of this thing: https://youtu.be/qvUbx9TvOwk
It reminded me of Chinese style military naming conventions, which makes sense since for all the anti-China bluster, Trump seems to be a big admirer of the power Xi has.
Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.
I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.
Indeed. WW1 and WW2 battleships are incredible pieces of engineering and (IMHO) rather beautiful in their own way. And some of them were built in very short time frames when you consider they had no computers to design them with.
As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.
It doesn’t matter if you assume that large scale conventional conflict between the us navy and the plan over Taiwan is impossible in a world with strategic nuclear weapons, otherwise it very much does matter, because navies are built on the timescale of decades and the plans you make today very much determine the future you will live in 10/20 years from now.
Well before any "battleships" are built, we'd need to build up the infrastructure to actually produce them. This would presumably still be useful when the battleships get cancelled and we move onto a real program.
Yes, the opportunity cost is the real problem with all of this. A navy takes approximately forever to build.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
If the navy diverts funds from the ddgx program for this, the usn goes from struggling to keep up with the plan’s expansion to being at risk of being completely outmatched in the late 2030’s / 40’s.
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
I think there needs to be more awareness on how dire the navies situation is. Most Americans assume the 100s of Billions per year to the USN keeps us at some unparalleled level, but that doesn't seem likely to hold true.
The US navy is in freefall. The best we can do is build a 40 year old destroyer hull and an aircraft carrier class that we plan to be building for literally 100 years. Shipyards can't build anything. Every design is mismanaged so poorly and leached on by traitorous defense contractors so badly that we get essentially nothing but the bill.
I think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best'. Theoretically we could be so much better, which is why everyone is so grumpy about U.S. shipbuilding.
For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?
10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.
> think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best’
I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.
Read the original comment they made again. They weren't talking about the proposed battleship at all, but about broader issues the U.S. Navy is already experiencing trying to build the already-approved designs.
> It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Indeed, it is beyond our current practical best, even if we assume the cartoon would ever be built. Which is, I suspect, what elicited the comment in the first place.
Because this and further politicization just makes the decline even worse. This just caused the cancellation of the DDG(X), which I'm sure would have been its own boondoggle in time.
The DDG(X) was the destroyer the US navy wanted to build no? I thought it was a nice concept on what a modern destroyer should do m, what was your issue with it (and it's cancelled now? For sure?)
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
Because US Navy procurement has been a disaster for over two decades now?
Just Zumwalt and LCS alone are like $50 billion burned up for nothing.
The Navy's issues with procurement go all the way back to the retiring of the Oliver Hazard Perry class without a suitable replacement in the pipeline.
>On the whole, it’s pretty clearly a grab-bag of stuff that sounded cool, thrown together without any real attempt to explain how is this better spending an equivalent amount of money on Burkes or on the DDG(X) program, which was going to come in around 15,000 tons, and which this is allegedly supposed to replace.
Yeah it's an ego project for someone with a fragile ego.
Wat?! But I've already cut off the tags on my new Dept of War swag and apparel!
At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.
“The Homer” is best compared to the M2 Bradley, whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”. Unfortunately, all large combat systems (most notably ships) tend to come with a grab bag of ‘features’ of varying utility.
The M2 Bradley is an amazing vehicle, which does not accomplish the goals which its development program started with (basically a low-cost and reliable armored personnel carrier). This is why the M113 is still in service.
They may be referring to the campaign Burton waged against the Bradley's testing program.
Basically he wanted the Army to do a bunch of tests we already knew the outcome of: that the munitions in question would defeat the armor. This wasn't some sort of scandal or surprise to the pentagon. No armored vehicle is invincible, and the Bradley is already as heavily armored as is practical to cross bridges without them collapsing, etc.
Burton made a ton of enemies treating this like some sort of huge scandal he was uncovering, but in reality he was distorting the situation, then used it to popularize his book.
Basically he's just a grifter, but because he was saying contrarian things a bunch of people who had no idea what was actually happening bought into his bullshit.
It's similar to what happened with the "Fighter Mafia" where the public latched onto it without understanding how utterly bullshit the contrarian proposal actually was.
Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.
It's going to be the "cybertruck of the seas" is what it's going to be if it's not quietly shelved when he gets distracted by some other thing that offends him.
Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles? It seems like, should a large-scale war happen again, it will look entirely different from the wars in the 20th century.
Ships are the only way to transport and deploy certain weapons across theaters; as such, there is no simple way to replace them. Your argument could be made in the era of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles (and that argument was made), yet navies have continued to develop and deploy warships.
That is unfortunately a complicated trade off, involving initial construction costs, total capability, maintainability, and crewing costs. Simply put, two amphibious assault ships do not equal or supersede one super-carrier.
>Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear
> Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.
That presumes no future innovation or improvement in defense systems.
Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.
25% interception rate on shit tier Kinzhals last year, which allegedly required salvoing all 32 interceptors from patriot battery, a patriot pac3 mse, aka the most advanced operational variant from 10 years ago. It's dropped to 6% now after RU improvement.
Math basically saying ~10 kinzhals can overwhelm typical carrier group with couple flight3 Burkes assuming all Burke VLS was dedicated to ABM, which it's not. Extrapolate to a more performant PRC hypersonic, and interception rate might approach 0. There's nothing in US missile defense tests (staged ballistic trajectories / simple decoys) that remotely suggest they have capable interceptors or the magazine depth to survive even moderate amount of high end hypersonics. Which is going to proliferate, see PRC building $100k commodity hypersonics for potential floor. Bundle that with space ISR and expeditionary navy model is even more dead in 10-15 years.
Hence IMO it's rational USnavy modernization/recapitalization is such a shit show. US legislatively locked in 11 carrier navy with all the supporting surface fleet that entails. Shit needs to be built, by law, but there's nothing competent to build in face of AShM math, so keep grafting and fucking around. It's not like USN acquisitions wasn't shit fucked before Trump.
All of US MIC acquisition behavior makes sense if one accepts that navy is probably fucked (including subsurface), the only thing US really needs for hegemony (excluding PRC containment, which US functionally can't), is 100-200 B21s (naval tacair/rip f/a-xx likely also fucked) to bomb whatever mid sized countries they want with impunity without putting surface fleet at risk (imagine Houthis with hypersonics). Any legacy naval hulls, tacair frames with some modernization will still black magic overmatch vs everyone except PRC for peacetime dick measuring. TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else. So USN does whatever it wants, which includes a lot of flailing because it doesn't really know what to do at all.
I don't think that taking interception rate as the only metric is fair. RU missiles have shown pretty low precision - and hitting a moving ship is much harder than hitting a stationary building, at least in my imagination.
> TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else.
Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.
We should christen it as a new class of ships: the dreadyep. With any luck, the gold encrustations will sink it when it is set afloat. Barring that, maybe some midshipman will "forget" to seal off a bilge port.
How much is "a lot"? Trump has cut almost all aid since taking office. The EU is paying for the aid now. I'm assuming that the reason Zelensky cares to talk with Trump is for appearances, military intelligence, and to stall the restart of trade relations between US and Russia. The US has no real place at the negotiating table anymore. Everybody's just catering to Trump's ego, because it's the easiest way to stop him from doing any more harm.
Whatever this febrile dream vaporware could be, it's still way too big for modern combat. Don't take my word for it, listen to a US Navy Commander, a serious person obviously, explain how it's terrible and completely inattentive to real USN needs and doctrine. https://youtu.be/0Zqa9azGo6M
Moreover though, it's another facet of the show of the White House occupant embellishing their ego and playing the reality star part through random, aspirational concepts of a plan.
PS: I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments, so this isn't a political message but a reality statement.
The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate. The proposed replacement based on the Legend class cutter. It is basically a corvette like LCS on a bigger hull. The Navy doesn't need more corvette, they need proper warships.
Red Sea shows that ships need more defenses now that anyone can build anti-ship missiles and drones. Maybe they should have called Constellation light destroyer and DDG(X) a cruiser.
As a non-American living across the pond, the thing that is most terrifying to me about Trump's presidency isn't his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, cruelty, or criminality. The world has seen plenty of leaders like that. Maybe not recently in so-called Western countries, but it happens. What's novel is his sheer idiocy. Calling him a moron is an insult to the intelligence of morons. And what's so terrifying about it isn't that a man so stupid was elected president of such a big and important country, although that's bad enough, but seeing American titans of industry and other members of its elite - people possessing real power - seriously discussing, or even praising, the quality of the emperor's new clothes.
It's always like this with authoritarians. They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often. They become the giver of power, and so those who want power do whatever they have to in order to get the big man to give it to them.
So the only surprises are 1) how fast this happened, and 2) that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
> They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often
Yes, but they're rarely that stupid. The world sees a man say five times that he's lowered drug prices by 400-1500%. And that was just last week. For many Europeans it's remarkable to even come across a person that stupid.
> that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
I never thought they were brilliant. I just thought they wouldn't sell themselves so cheaply or would be so easily intimidated.
Except that this particular authoritarian in question is likely intellectually unable to parse the truth, while also being completely uninterested in it
I mean the whole proposal is nothing more than some of Trump's staffers coming up with an image and a bullet list and him liking it.
The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.
I wish SNL was currently on the air and made a hell of a joke out of that announcement...
Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".
Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"
Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.
Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)
Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".
It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon. The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
But they looked really cool.
Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
[1] https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm
[2] https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-miss...
> It's all hype
It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand.
What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
A submarine automated drone production and deployment platform would be as damaging to a Navy today as aircraft carriers were to battleships.
Why would you want to produce drones from the same facility as you deploy them? You would terribly hinder each task.
maybe... maybe we should stop electing these ancient white bastards whose brains fossilized back in the days of rotary phones and vacuum tubes. I don't know.
Yeah but the other option was a chick
I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not.
At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.
So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)
† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
Both of these two contests were really weird. Trump is an extremely unusual Republican. Hillary was someone Republican mouthpieces had been priming the electorate to vote against for the prior 20+ years. Kamala moved to the top of the ticket late in the race, in an odd move, replacing a candidate whose approval ratings had been in (historically speaking) “you will definitely lose” territory for months already.
Both races were pretty close despite this.
Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?
I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.
You're correct. That woman (Clinton) had no chance in winning, because Republicans had spent years hammering her in anticipation of her inevitable run, and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy. Had Harris had more time, she could've taken it.
Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.
But it's all essentially naval gazing.
Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree.
(I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)
I see no reason why both parties should not try.
Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.
The only 2 that have run are not a good example.
A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.
Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.
That’s very charitable. Floor wax has utility.
Converting this sentence to singular form instead of plural seems apropos.
The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies).
The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship
Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea.
There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc.
But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship.
It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage.
Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles.
Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task.
So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
> The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so.
And then it has to go back to base to reload. Reloading at sea is marginally possible. The U.S. Navy has demonstrated it recently, in harbor. But it's not done routinely with live ammo yet. This is a known weak point.
It's not clear when you would ever reload a conventional ships gun at sea either though, particularly on a modern transparent battle space.
It would still involve putting two or more ships in close proximity with heavy lift equipment for an extended time.
If this is close to the front it's a target, if it's not then you could reload VLS cells, and to do it your sacrificing the ability to put munitions on targets quickly which might just cost you the entire ship.
It's not even clear it saves you any reload time, since the only potential benefit is that shells are somewhat smaller then missiles, and even then once you account for magazine design and survivability I'd say the trade off is questionable at best.
You can helicopter shells and propellant onto the deck, then take them below for storage — as loading the guns from their magazines already happens.
VLS requires that you reload missile by missile at the place they’re fired from the top, which requires you have crane access to each VLS cell. You could replace the many non-reloadable tubes with fewer, reloadable tubes connected via loaders to magazines… but we’re starting down the path to re-inventing guns.
The notion of a "crew optional" ship is a bit silly. It might have some utility for coastal defense: when it breaks down close to shore you can send a tugboat to tow it back. But I can't see how uncrewed surface vessels would be of much use to an expeditionary blue-water navy. Anything constantly exposed to salt water and vibration will break down. We're decades away from having robots that can do maintenance and repair.
Routine maintenance like cleaning, inspection, and consumables replacement is very easily automated. Breakdowns can easily be prevented with a combination of redundancy and preventative maintenance. Without a crew you can eliminate many systems that are necessary for sustaining a crew's long term presence which leaves a lot fewer failure points and a lot of room for redundant systems. With modular design you don't need an advanced robot that can fix an arbitrary problem, you just rip out whatever module contains the problem and replace it. It's unlikely on any given deployment that you'd run into a particular problem that can't be handled by an automated system and must be addressed prior to the next return to base, but if you did then telepresence robots, or a team flown over from a nearby ship in the battlegroup would likely be sufficient. If your ship is having a problem that is likely to cause the loss of the ship and a team of experts alone is not enough to fix it, do you really want to have more bodies on that ship?
US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships.
Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them...
[0] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/worl...
The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca.
Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.
> China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island
I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless.
To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China.
> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate
Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets.
edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you...
> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate
Welcome to 2025. How about those unmanned submarines that can be made dirty cheap?
>The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers".
Do you mean 'battle cruisers'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser
'Light cruisers' were different again.
>No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
Bismark was finished off by surface ships after the initial air attack.
Tirpitz took many sorties to sink.
The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
> The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.
The story ahead of the Tirpiz sinking is fascinating [0], right up there with the account in Blind Man's Bluff of Ivy Bells [1].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Source
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.
truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength?
Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles.
Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!
It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.
> It probably doesn't really matter
Millions—if not billions—of dollars are likely to be wasted on this over the coming years.
There's also potentially a substantial opportunity cost re: parity with China in the near to mid term even if we don't actually end up cancelling the next gen destroyer in favor of this thing: https://youtu.be/qvUbx9TvOwk
At least the name Golden Fleet makes sense since everything the US military buys is priced like it's made of solid gold.
It reminded me of Chinese style military naming conventions, which makes sense since for all the anti-China bluster, Trump seems to be a big admirer of the power Xi has.
Don't worry - we're dismantling our science and research infrastructure and cutting welfare programs so it all evens out.
They're hard at work nuking the dollar too so maybe that doesn't matter anymore then
Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.
I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.
That’s where the Trump dynasty will live in the future, in the bunker.
But think of the aesthetics!
That super sized destroyer has non of the battleship aesthetics though.
Indeed. WW1 and WW2 battleships are incredible pieces of engineering and (IMHO) rather beautiful in their own way. And some of them were built in very short time frames when you consider they had no computers to design them with.
Big “beautiful” bill comes to mind.
As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.
> As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump
You’re the first one in this thread mentioning him.
The non-battleship in question is literally named the Trump Class.
And has an image of him on the back of the ship on this rendering:
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/USS-Defiant-T...
It doesn’t matter if you assume that large scale conventional conflict between the us navy and the plan over Taiwan is impossible in a world with strategic nuclear weapons, otherwise it very much does matter, because navies are built on the timescale of decades and the plans you make today very much determine the future you will live in 10/20 years from now.
Well before any "battleships" are built, we'd need to build up the infrastructure to actually produce them. This would presumably still be useful when the battleships get cancelled and we move onto a real program.
Yes, the opportunity cost is the real problem with all of this. A navy takes approximately forever to build.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
If the navy diverts funds from the ddgx program for this, the usn goes from struggling to keep up with the plan’s expansion to being at risk of being completely outmatched in the late 2030’s / 40’s.
It's over...
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
I think there needs to be more awareness on how dire the navies situation is. Most Americans assume the 100s of Billions per year to the USN keeps us at some unparalleled level, but that doesn't seem likely to hold true.
The US navy is in freefall. The best we can do is build a 40 year old destroyer hull and an aircraft carrier class that we plan to be building for literally 100 years. Shipyards can't build anything. Every design is mismanaged so poorly and leached on by traitorous defense contractors so badly that we get essentially nothing but the bill.
> best we can do
Why would you take this as an indication of the “best we can do”?
I think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best'. Theoretically we could be so much better, which is why everyone is so grumpy about U.S. shipbuilding.
For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?
10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.
> think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best’
I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.
> But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Read the original comment they made again. They weren't talking about the proposed battleship at all, but about broader issues the U.S. Navy is already experiencing trying to build the already-approved designs.
> It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Indeed, it is beyond our current practical best, even if we assume the cartoon would ever be built. Which is, I suspect, what elicited the comment in the first place.
Because this and further politicization just makes the decline even worse. This just caused the cancellation of the DDG(X), which I'm sure would have been its own boondoggle in time.
The DDG(X) was the destroyer the US navy wanted to build no? I thought it was a nice concept on what a modern destroyer should do m, what was your issue with it (and it's cancelled now? For sure?)
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
Because there's no secret group of competent people waiting in the wings.
The military-industrial complex we have is the only one we got.
Because US Navy procurement has been a disaster for over two decades now?
Just Zumwalt and LCS alone are like $50 billion burned up for nothing.
The Navy's issues with procurement go all the way back to the retiring of the Oliver Hazard Perry class without a suitable replacement in the pipeline.
I'm not saying its the best we should do. But its the best we are capable of doing.
"The missile is too round at the top, it needs to be pointy. Round missiles are not scary"
- The Dictator
So the trump admin is going something like a battleship. I would be surprised if they would be capable of doing that.
From what I have read and heard, they are much better at destroying existing functional structures than building functional things.
>On the whole, it’s pretty clearly a grab-bag of stuff that sounded cool, thrown together without any real attempt to explain how is this better spending an equivalent amount of money on Burkes or on the DDG(X) program, which was going to come in around 15,000 tons, and which this is allegedly supposed to replace.
Yeah it's an ego project for someone with a fragile ego.
The spec on this piece of propaganda is the main battery is all missile systems. And the secondary is 5" guns, lasers, and a railgun.
The Navy stopped trying to install railguns back in 2021 but never stopped development.
I assume the lasers are future tech that sound cool, except this thing will be cancelled right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD.
> right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD
It's never actually been renamed. They just changed the stationery and website: https://www.usa.gov/agencies/u-s-department-of-defense.
Just like how Trump called in workers to put his name on the Kennedy Center building. Changing the name requires an act of Congress: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/76i
Wat?! But I've already cut off the tags on my new Dept of War swag and apparel!
At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.
Lasers might be really useful if a ship is being attacked by a swarm of drones. (The part about hitting those drones may be future, though...)
The same blog has an excellent series on lasers as a naval weapon:
part 1: https://www.navalgazing.net/Lasers-at-Sea-Part-1
NB/ Lasers do not cope well with smoke, fog or rain.
This is reminiscent of the Homer: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
“The Homer” is best compared to the M2 Bradley, whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”. Unfortunately, all large combat systems (most notably ships) tend to come with a grab bag of ‘features’ of varying utility.
Bradleys are actually very useful and likely best in their class as an infantry fighting vehicle.
The M2 Bradley is an amazing vehicle, which does not accomplish the goals which its development program started with (basically a low-cost and reliable armored personnel carrier). This is why the M113 is still in service.
The Bradley has performed very well in Ukraine, and the man who wrote that book is both a liar and crazy.
Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
>Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
Perhaps you could give a summary?
They may be referring to the campaign Burton waged against the Bradley's testing program.
Basically he wanted the Army to do a bunch of tests we already knew the outcome of: that the munitions in question would defeat the armor. This wasn't some sort of scandal or surprise to the pentagon. No armored vehicle is invincible, and the Bradley is already as heavily armored as is practical to cross bridges without them collapsing, etc.
Burton made a ton of enemies treating this like some sort of huge scandal he was uncovering, but in reality he was distorting the situation, then used it to popularize his book.
Basically he's just a grifter, but because he was saying contrarian things a bunch of people who had no idea what was actually happening bought into his bullshit.
It's similar to what happened with the "Fighter Mafia" where the public latched onto it without understanding how utterly bullshit the contrarian proposal actually was.
Thanks for the summary.
Related to the definition of Battleship for the fellow pedantic: What is a tank
https://acoup.blog/2022/05/06/collections-when-is-a-tank-not...
Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.
It's going to be the "cybertruck of the seas" is what it's going to be if it's not quietly shelved when he gets distracted by some other thing that offends him.
If you’re looking for a “cybertruck of the seas”, I think the Zumwalt class is a prime candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer
It had some potential, but that potential has been squandered, at great cost.
The stats are crazy:
Similar "stats" to the Seawolf class.
Planned: 29 Completed: 3 Canceled: 26 Active: 3
Yet, unlike the Zumwalts, they are considered a good boat.
Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles? It seems like, should a large-scale war happen again, it will look entirely different from the wars in the 20th century.
Ships are the only way to transport and deploy certain weapons across theaters; as such, there is no simple way to replace them. Your argument could be made in the era of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles (and that argument was made), yet navies have continued to develop and deploy warships.
Yes, but in an age of guided missiles, surely better to have 3x10k ton warship than 1x30k ton warship.
That is unfortunately a complicated trade off, involving initial construction costs, total capability, maintainability, and crewing costs. Simply put, two amphibious assault ships do not equal or supersede one super-carrier.
>Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear
Source?
You can Google it easily. Showed up on satellite photos
> Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.
[1] https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2024/11/20/ukraines-patrio...
China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's.
May. Or maybe the whole thing is just hype.
> China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's
They probably do. But absent positive profiling, it doesn’t make sense to design against a hypothetical super weapon.
You are quite confused.
Anticipating the future and developing counters/mitigations is at the very core of what pentagon planners do.
That presumes no future innovation or improvement in defense systems.
Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.
Pretty much.
25% interception rate on shit tier Kinzhals last year, which allegedly required salvoing all 32 interceptors from patriot battery, a patriot pac3 mse, aka the most advanced operational variant from 10 years ago. It's dropped to 6% now after RU improvement.
Math basically saying ~10 kinzhals can overwhelm typical carrier group with couple flight3 Burkes assuming all Burke VLS was dedicated to ABM, which it's not. Extrapolate to a more performant PRC hypersonic, and interception rate might approach 0. There's nothing in US missile defense tests (staged ballistic trajectories / simple decoys) that remotely suggest they have capable interceptors or the magazine depth to survive even moderate amount of high end hypersonics. Which is going to proliferate, see PRC building $100k commodity hypersonics for potential floor. Bundle that with space ISR and expeditionary navy model is even more dead in 10-15 years.
Hence IMO it's rational USnavy modernization/recapitalization is such a shit show. US legislatively locked in 11 carrier navy with all the supporting surface fleet that entails. Shit needs to be built, by law, but there's nothing competent to build in face of AShM math, so keep grafting and fucking around. It's not like USN acquisitions wasn't shit fucked before Trump.
All of US MIC acquisition behavior makes sense if one accepts that navy is probably fucked (including subsurface), the only thing US really needs for hegemony (excluding PRC containment, which US functionally can't), is 100-200 B21s (naval tacair/rip f/a-xx likely also fucked) to bomb whatever mid sized countries they want with impunity without putting surface fleet at risk (imagine Houthis with hypersonics). Any legacy naval hulls, tacair frames with some modernization will still black magic overmatch vs everyone except PRC for peacetime dick measuring. TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else. So USN does whatever it wants, which includes a lot of flailing because it doesn't really know what to do at all.
I don't think that taking interception rate as the only metric is fair. RU missiles have shown pretty low precision - and hitting a moving ship is much harder than hitting a stationary building, at least in my imagination.
> TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else.
Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.
We should christen it as a new class of ships: the dreadyep. With any luck, the gold encrustations will sink it when it is set afloat. Barring that, maybe some midshipman will "forget" to seal off a bilge port.
A modern continuation of the Swedish Wasa class?
Meanwhile, China has found a simple and practical alternative.
https://www.twz.com/sea/chinese-cargo-ship-packed-full-of-mo...
Interesting read. Given what was covered and tradition notwithstanding, I think “Trump Class” (apart from being an oxymoron) is a perfect designation:
- oversized
- completely lacking in style
- not technically capable for the role it finds itself in!
I believe the designation you are looking for is “all-round fucking stupid”
"Trump Class Battleship" - absurd
"Gulf of America" - absurd
"Tariffs will reduce inflation" - absurd
"Trump Kennedy Center" - absurd
"Mexico will pay for the wall" - absurd
"Ukraine started the war" - absurd
"We'll make drugs 1500% cheaper" - absurd
---
Why does MAGA love absurdity so much?
Believing in the absurd is a test of loyalty to the regime.
Perhaps for the same reason that conspiracy theorists need to ‘one-up’ each other - it’s a signal that you’re part of the group.
Hey come on buddy, it's not like there's a list of the 30,573 outright lies or misleading statements made by Grifter in Chief since his first term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...
They're authoritarians. Study fascism, or Nazism, or any authoritarian cult. All of them are absurd.
Yeah that's what the military youtubers are saying too...makes no sense
Unless the intention is to attract a lot of attention, in which case it makes perfect sense.
So Americans are now about to replace words in dictionary with word "Trump" or it will only be used as a prefix? [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYJ2w82WifU
Taiwan will be betrayed just like Ukraine.
Despite Trump childish behavior, Ukraine is still getting a lot of weapons and money last I checked.
How much is "a lot"? Trump has cut almost all aid since taking office. The EU is paying for the aid now. I'm assuming that the reason Zelensky cares to talk with Trump is for appearances, military intelligence, and to stall the restart of trade relations between US and Russia. The US has no real place at the negotiating table anymore. Everybody's just catering to Trump's ego, because it's the easiest way to stop him from doing any more harm.
Whatever this febrile dream vaporware could be, it's still way too big for modern combat. Don't take my word for it, listen to a US Navy Commander, a serious person obviously, explain how it's terrible and completely inattentive to real USN needs and doctrine. https://youtu.be/0Zqa9azGo6M
Moreover though, it's another facet of the show of the White House occupant embellishing their ego and playing the reality star part through random, aspirational concepts of a plan.
PS: I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments, so this isn't a political message but a reality statement.
I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments
As opposed to the corrupt King who loves to pardon corrupt politicians, no matter their stripe.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
If you want to know what the Navy was/is really planning look up the DDG(X).
A destroyer planned since 2021, hopefully it won't be another Ticonderoga class fuck up.
The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate. The proposed replacement based on the Legend class cutter. It is basically a corvette like LCS on a bigger hull. The Navy doesn't need more corvette, they need proper warships.
Red Sea shows that ships need more defenses now that anyone can build anti-ship missiles and drones. Maybe they should have called Constellation light destroyer and DDG(X) a cruiser.
As a non-American living across the pond, the thing that is most terrifying to me about Trump's presidency isn't his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, cruelty, or criminality. The world has seen plenty of leaders like that. Maybe not recently in so-called Western countries, but it happens. What's novel is his sheer idiocy. Calling him a moron is an insult to the intelligence of morons. And what's so terrifying about it isn't that a man so stupid was elected president of such a big and important country, although that's bad enough, but seeing American titans of industry and other members of its elite - people possessing real power - seriously discussing, or even praising, the quality of the emperor's new clothes.
It's always like this with authoritarians. They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often. They become the giver of power, and so those who want power do whatever they have to in order to get the big man to give it to them.
So the only surprises are 1) how fast this happened, and 2) that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
> They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often
Yes, but they're rarely that stupid. The world sees a man say five times that he's lowered drug prices by 400-1500%. And that was just last week. For many Europeans it's remarkable to even come across a person that stupid.
> that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
I never thought they were brilliant. I just thought they wouldn't sell themselves so cheaply or would be so easily intimidated.
Except that this particular authoritarian in question is likely intellectually unable to parse the truth, while also being completely uninterested in it
I mean the whole proposal is nothing more than some of Trump's staffers coming up with an image and a bullet list and him liking it.
The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.
I guess some defense contractor paid to sit next to him at dinner. KA-CHING!
I wish SNL was currently on the air and made a hell of a joke out of that announcement...
Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".
Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"
Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.
Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)
Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/trump-new-na...